I decided to build my first sand box ever. I always wanted one, but there was no time or reason until now. Fortunately, hardware is ridiculously cheap these days compared to the past, so you can actually run full-blown Oracle Applications on your home PC without compromises.

I built a Dual Core box with 8G of RAM for an install of E-Business Suite R12. For OS I chose Oracle EL5U2, mainly because I’m used to the RH/OEL clones, and also because I expected it to be less painful than other distributions.

I started slowly, as time allowed, spending some time chasing various libraries and packages on the Net. Eventually it took me a week to realize how tedious it is to go the manual way. I got so frustrated by the dependencies that I gave up and purchased access to the ULN network.

Just to illustrate the type of struggle I went through, I found four distinct lists of required packages for 10g installation (in Oracle documentation and metalink combined). I’d recommend Note 421308.1 - Requirements For Installing Oracle10gR2 On RHEL/OEL 5 (x86_64), which summarizes the database part in a neat way. I also encourage you not to underestimate requirements of related Note 376183.1 - Defining a “default RPMs” installation of the RHEL OS.

Nevertheless, it’s just way more easy to use the oracle-validated package, which will download all dependencies for you. Well, almost all.

The next step was to prepare the machine. The only tricky part (from the DBA point of view) is to setup a DNS server, but even that went well. There are plenty of nice howtos on the web — search for keyword “rndc”.

Once I had all the required packages installed, users created, kernel parameters set, domain name resolution working, and Xvnc started, it was time to call a wizard.

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Oracle R12 is certified to install on 64-bit Linux for X86_64 platforms. Yeah, I know that’s old news. The interesting part here is it’s not “pure” 64-bit software like the Oracle Database on Linux 64-bit: R12 is taking advantage of the OS’s capability to run 32-bit executables.

If we look at metalink note 416305.1, there is a big list of 32-bit RPMs in the pre-req packages list for R12 on 64-bit Linux. This is not something new — 11i on Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX also had the same behaviour.

11i doesn’t take advantage of 64-bit capabilities of the OS at full scale. It runs in 32-bit mode even on a 64-bit OS, as all its executables are 32-bit. One place where 11i does use the 64-bit feature is the “Memory Based Planner” program, which is part of the Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP) module. Oracle shipped a 64-bit version of the program only for the Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX platforms, while the Linux version had just the 32-bit version. I have seen customers who added a Solaris Middle Tier to their Linux 11i instances just to run this 64-bit Planner program, spending all the dollars they saved with Linux middle tiers thus far, in consulting fees to add that extra Solaris middle tier node.

The good news for R12 customers is that, we don’t need a Solaris, AIX or HP-UX middle tier any more to run the 64-bit Planner program. Oracle has started shipping 64-bit Planner (MSONWL64.exe) for Linux 64-bit from version 12.0.3 onwards. Check Metalink note 254810.1 for details.

If you are a early adopter of R12 with a version earlier than 12.0.3, its time to patch up to 12.0.3 or 12.0.4. and migrate to the Linux 64-bit platform. This migration to Linux 64-bit should not be a big hassle, as it is binary-compatible with Linux 32-bit. I expect it be as simple as 1) copy, 2) relink, and 3) startup. I will, however, find out the exact method, and post here in the blog.